"The Vast, Empty Oceans"

REVIEW |

Like many simulator games, outside of racing sims of course, Ship Simulator Extremes caters to a very specific audience. While the average gamer may find Ship Simulator deterring, it at least offers some mildly entertaining missions for those who won't be engrossed in simply captaining their own ship. That being said, Ship Simulator is still a largely empty experience and perhaps its targeted niche market actually hinders the game in the long run.

As what would be expected from a game titled Ship Simulator, you're placed in control of a variety of ships and tasked with… running them in their day to day operations. Of course, the aforementioned missions add some structure to this management and give you an objective to strive for. However, the basics remain the same across most, if not all available ships, which brings me to one of the positives of Ship Simulator Extremes Collection: there is a large variety of ships available for you to captain into the massive maps available to you. This is a welcome break from the monotony that unfortunately builds very quickly while playing Ship Simulator.

There's no doubt in my mind that Ship Simulator Extremes gives an accurate portray of captaining a ship. However, you quickly run out of things to do. The games focuses on realism and, in that pursuit, distances travelled are also relatively realistic. That means that once you've set your ship on a particular heading you get the "pleasure" of watching it sail, which personally became no real pleasure at all for me. Because you're often dropped into scenarios, everything is carefully structured for your mission experience. However, this leads to large stretches of empty sailing while you're moving from one objective to the next. In reality, the most challenging and engaging missions still boil down to overly simplistic experiences, which become more of a chore to play than anything.

Ship Simulator Extremes doesn't push the mark on graphics and sounds either. While there are some pleasing water effects, everything has an extremely dated feel. The lackluster aesthetic really pulls you out of the experience, and the absence of a notable musical score is essentially the final nail in the coffin.

On a closing note, Ship Simulator Extremes Collection isn't a bad game for what it aims to do. It does successfully simulate the experience of controlling a ship in various places, harbors, and weather conditions. However, playing that game left me wanting for something more fulfilling in terms of an simulation experience, and Ship Simulator simply does not deliver that experience at any point.

GameDynamo's Score for Ship Simulator Extremes Collection (PC)

Graphics

The ships are well detailed and the water looks nice, but the vast empty oceans and the bad textures for anything land-based are hard to overlook.

Sound

There's the sound of rushing water as you're sailing through it and the occasional fog horn... but I don't remember hearing much of anything in terms in game music.

Gameplay

I can't deny that sending a speedboat careening into a freighter is fun, but the actual in-game mission structure is both too simplistic and too boring.

Play Value

I'm not entirely sure about the multiplayer of the game, but I couldn't imagine myself coming back to this game after the time I've already spent with it.

Final Score 47

Ultimately, the game doesn't deliver a consistent and enjoyable experience, and that is its greatest hindrance and ultimately its downfall.